Pantry Makeover Part II and Comfort Food

One unfortunate side effect of switching over to foods that you keep in the pantry rather than the freezer is that bugs tend to get into pantry foods.  I ended up with a pretty major bug problem awhile back, and decided that if I wanted to keep all of my healthy stuff bug-free, it would not be done in the plastic bags from the grocery store.  Buying in bulk is wonderful-if you have a place to keep all of it!

Plastic containers can get expensive, so I went Goodwill hunting (ba-dum, ching!) for some glass jars with lids.  After cleaning out every Goodwill and Savers on my side of town, I went to the other side of town and cleaned those out, too.  Glass jars were harder to find than I thought!  I never spent more than a dollar a jar, though, and some of those containers were big!  I then painted the outsides with a square of chalkboard paint to label what I had inside.  This arrangement ought to keep the bugs out pretty well!

This also makes for a more user-friendly and functional pantry.  I have beans and grains on the bottom shelf; nuts, seeds, and dried fruits on the middle shelf; and baking goods on the top shelf. It's much easier to find what I need now!  I also had a few tall, skinny jars leftover.  I'm using those to store my homemade almond milk and the leftover pulp (for making almond cheese) in the fridge.  

It was driving me nuts to keep all of my flour and sugar in the freezer, too.  Sure, it kept the bugs out, but it took up a lot of room and I wasn't able to use the cool blue canisters I found at a thrift store years ago when I got my first apartment.  The canisters look like something someone made in a  ceramics class and aren't really sealed.  A thin line of hot glue around the rim solved that problem, as the lids now stick pretty well.  I threw in some bay leaves for an extra layer of protection.

This weekend was the perfect time for fall comfort food.  I used the recipe for sticky cinnamon rolls from veganbaking.net to make these delicious cinnamon rolls, topped with raisins and walnuts, this afternoon:

I added some homemade pumpkin butter to the filling for some more flavor.  The pumpkin butter, along with my homemade nutella and a bag of tortillas, has been coming with me to school the last couple of days as I've been in too much of a hurry to pack a lunch.  Hey, assemble your own PB&J at lunch time isn't half bad!

Chili and cinnamon rolls (yes, they go together!) were always a fall staple in my house growing up.  It was our traditional Halloween meal.  Chili is the official state dish, after all!  I didn't get any pictures of the chili, but it is your basic chili without any meat.  Instead, I used pinto, black, lima, and garbanzo beans.  I also threw in some fresh Hatch green chiles.  Delicious.  

I needed the comfort food this weekend.  Rheumatoid arthritis is nothing if not unpredictable, and despite being on a very good treatment for the last five years, I occasionally have flares and have to be a hermit for a few days because I can't get down my stairs.  I've spent most of the last 24 hours in my pajamas covered in Icy Hot.  Thankfully, 22 years of living with RA has left me prepared and I have all of the necessary gadgets around to make sure I'm as comfy as possible while dealing with the pain.  Can you tell which knee is the swollen one?!?!?!?!

White Cat nicely sums up how I have spent most of my weekend thus far, and how I intend to spend the rest of it:

Pantry Makeover: Part I

Since the end of last school year, I have been cooking completely without animal products.  Yes, that's right, the dreaded V word: vegan.  Before I go any further, I feel I should give a disclaimer.  I am not a true vegan because I am not a full-time vegan. I still have a weakness for Chick-fil-a that I give in to about once every two weeks, and if I go to someone's house I will not turn down a dinner with meat in it.  It's hard (sometimes downright impossible) with my crazy schedule to always plan ahead for healthy meals, and fast food it is.  However, for my own health I've been trying to rid my house of animal products and processed foods.

Except honey.  I just can't go *that* far.

My motivation had less to do with the compassion side of things than it had to do with my own health.  Since becoming more aware of exactly what's going into my body, I have lost 40 pounds.  I also have rheumatoid arthritis and have discovered that my joints feel better and my medication seems more effective when I eat a natural, plant-based diet.

A good friend of mine saw my Facebook post last night about the dairy-free cheese sauce I'd made to go on my black bean enchiladas and asked for the recipe.  She has Crohn's disease and has a love-hate relationship with dairy.  We are disease cousins, as both of our diseases are autoimmune problems.

So, here are some dairy-free recipes I've been using, for the most part without soy.  Soy is great but it mimics estrogen and too much of it can be a bad thing!  I can't claim credit for these recipes, so I will post them with my own tweaks and give credit to the websites where I found them.

Vegan "Cheese"Sauce:


1/4 C cashews, soaked for a few hours and rinsed
1 1/4 C water
1/4 C oil
4T Nutritional Yeast (available at most health food stores, this is what gives the flavor, so don't leave it out!)
1 t salt
2T corn starch, OR 4T flour
1/4 c diced red bell pepper (for color and a little kick)

1. Put everything but the corn starch in a blender and blend on high for a minute or so.
2. Put in a saucepan and add corn starch/flour.  Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick.

inspiration from: Vegan Grandma


Almond Milk: I can't do any better than the recipe and instructional video from My New Roots.  So go watch that and enjoy.  As soon as I finish writing this, I'm off to make my second batch of almond milk.

Almond Cheese:


Leftover pulp from almond milk
1/4 c oil
1/4 c lemon juice
Salt to taste
Fresh dill to taste

1. Combine it all, preferably in a blender.
2.  If you want to, you can ferment this stuff, then drain off some of the liquid and press it into a more cream cheese-like texture.  Or you can just put it in the fridge and dip veggies and crackers into it.   I took it for lunch the other day with some crackers and veggies and it was fabulous.  It's also very filling.

My New Roots has some more recipes with almond pulp, as well as links, here.

Also try the raw tacos (with a dairy-free sour cream sauce), here.

While you're there, check out the other posts.  This blog has been a huge source of recipes and inspiration.  I love it because not all of the recipes use things that are obviously trying way too hard to be like meat.  Everything is made from natural, whole foods.

One challenge I have faced is keeping all of my food organized in my pantry and keeping it bug-free.  When you buy fresh ingredients in bulk at the health food store, they are in those little plastic produce bags and attract bugs.  Of course the bugs get into the plastic.

Tomorrow I'll post Part II, which is how I finally got all this stuff organized and into containers that were bug-proof.

Off to make almond milk!

Weekend Project: Free Couch Upgrade

So I should totally be in bed right now, but I figure I'm going to spend half the night getting my neurotic cat to stop howling at the window all night and anyway the pants I want to wear tomorrow are in the dryer and I don't want to iron them, so I'm waiting for them to be done.

Now is the perfect time to display my weekend project! On Friday I acquired a free couch from Freecycle. Google this organization if you don't know what it is. It requires you to join a yahoo group and you get a lot of emails, but every once in awhile there's a real find. I've been using a papasan chair for over a year and really wanted something that was a) more comfortable, and b) didn't say "OMG what a nice dorm room!"

I picked it up Friday and on Saturday one of my colleagues helped me get it up my stairs. Below is the before picture. It's in good shape, but it's missing the seat cushion (flew out of someone's truck, apparently). One of the back cushions isn't pictured; those bags are stuffing. Also, it's kinda boring.

It came with four throw pillows that had backs in the same fabric as the couch and this stuff on the front, which really doesn't jive with my whole color scheme:

Grandma always said, waste not, want not. I endeavored to use as much of the original fabric as possible, so I only removed the front panel of each back cushion. This saved me a lot of work, as I didn't have to mess with the zipper! I then used the panels I removed and the back panels from the throw pillows to piece together a bottom for the seat cushion. That way, everything is tied together, too.
The seat cushion. Wow. That was an adventure. I was originally going to use foam, but JoAnn Fabrics was charging $80 a yard for 5" thick foam! Holy mole! I spent some time being frustrated but then realized that I had a ton of stuffing at home-even more if I took stuffing out of the poor, tired papasan mattress that had no hope of survival anyway-the grape kool-aid stains would see to that. So, I took the stuffing from the papasan to stuff the seat. None of the cushions fit particularly well right now, but with some use the stuffing will settle. I have two extra bags, so if it settles too much I can always add more!

The addition of the couch required a new furniture arrangement....so the bench that used to be my tv stand long ago has moved to the "dining room" which is now just officially a practice and book room, because there's no way a table is ever going to fit in there. My cello doesn't even get to stay there.

Total cost of the project: $30 for two yards of upholstery fabric (54" wide) at Hobby Lobby on sale. Not bad! I did spend some time cleaning and steaming the couch-but who doesn't have a ton of time, right? Right?

Back to School Shenanigans

Since I teach in a year-round district (which is heaven, by the way), the kids come back to school on Monday. We've been busy in inservices this week doing training and preparing for the kids to come back. I also had the good fortune to attend a training for the International Baccalaureate Program a couple of weeks ago, which I will do a full post on very soon. It deserves its own post because it was that awesome.

I'll also post pictures soon of the DIY going on in my office and on the walls of my classroom just as soon as they are suitable for presentation. Campus is open tomorrow afternoon, and of course I'll be there making folders and such.

Anyway, I got rid of the dreads.

They were proving to be too much work and weren't looking very good, so I went with a bob, which I LOVE.

At today's work day, there was a faculty sandwich making contest. Fine Arts normally doesn't display our creativity at such things, as our band guys are out on the field with the band this week and the rest of us would rather go to the Chinese buffet. We were told that we had to participate, however, so this is what we came up with:

As you can see, we called our sandwich "the starving artist." We seriously considered Ramen noodles instead but decided that would be pushing the envelope. So we opted for peanut butter, bananas, and honey. No jelly. Starving artists can't afford such luxuries. Since we're artists, though, we cut our sandwiches into dinosaurs and choo choo trains, and we made one burrito style sandwich. We didn't win. I don't think we care too much. Our presentation was excellent. Do you like our newspaper tablecloth?

To all of the administrators out there: you may be sorely tempted to split up your fine arts people during inservice. Don't. Your meetings will be quieter, but your fine arts people will be really sad. We like to sit together even if we do get in trouble. Our principal had to come sit with the fine arts table at our last meeting in an attempt to keep us quiet. It didn't work. I couldn't tell if she was entertained or horrified, but she laughed right along with us. We were supposed to be summarizing something and it went something like this:

Theatre teacher reading aloud the latest addition to our summary:".....guidelines to follow..."

All the music people: "Follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road...."

Principal: (sighs) "We were doing so well."

We're a little ADD. Or GT. Or both. Heck, I don't know. The point is, we are the most fun department at school, and I'm pretty sure everyone else is just jealous.

Cat Lady

About a week ago I was riding with my dad in the car. He turned to me and said, "When are you going to get a boyfriend instead of those damn cats?" I don't know if he realized the impact of what he said or not. I am perfectly happy with myself and my situation right now, and it bothers me that everyone is so hung up on relationships. "Stephanie Schmid is single" instead of "Stephanie Schmid is independent." No one sets up a registry when they get a fabulous new job, and no one receives congratulatory cards after five years of making it on their own. But get married or have a baby and it seems that you are entitled to such things. While we're on the subject, I'd like to tackle some stereotypes. I'm sure this will spark discussion and make some people mad. I am ok with this.

#1: Cat Lady

I have jokingly referred to myself as the cat lady a few times, but it still bothers me. I have two cats because it would be unfair in my current living situation for me to have a dog, and it's nice to have living things at home who love you just because you feed them. But owning cats, if you are a single woman, seems to make people believe that you will never get married or have a relationship or be happy. You are doomed to be alone and miserable. Would people think the same thing if you had dogs? Birds? Fish? Which pet is it that paints a single woman as desirable and happy? In what I think was an attempt to make amends the other day, my dad saw my cats and said, "Your kids look good, Steph." Dear Dad: my cats are not children and I do not view them as such. I do not own "I love cats" anything, I do not call my cats my "fur babies", and I am far less obsessed with them than you are with your dogs, or with anyone else's dog for that matter. Get over it.

#2: Strong and Independent=Gay

I can't even tell you the number of times that people have assumed I'm gay. Their reasons vary, but the bottom line is that I turned the corner from north of 20 to south of 30 without getting married or at least accidentally getting pregnant. Other reasons include: I own power tools; I know how to use said power tools, and do; I drive a truck; I do a lot of my own repairs; I like to build things. In other words, I don't depend on a man to do the traditional man things. I suck it up and do it myself, because that's the kind of person I am. I am 100% attracted to men, but I am 0% reliant upon them. Chivalry isn't dead, and I will by all means let a man hold the door open for me, and melt on the spot if he carries my stuff up the stairs for me, but if I end up with a guy who cooks and hates to fix things, that's fine too.

But why does it even matter? Why does everyone have to know who everyone else is attracted to? Frankly, unless you're interested in dating me or in setting me up with someone awesome, I don't think it's any of your business. And your preference is none of my business either.

#3: Driven=Bitchy

I am married to my job. It's a happier marriage than a lot of others I've seen. I will skip or turn down a date if it means backing out on a job responsibility. I have a life, too, but a lot of people fail to understand just how important my job is to me. Because the name on my degree and my teaching license is my current last name, I plan to keep it if and when I get married. It's mine and I like it. People have called me "bitchy" because of this. I had no idea that retaining one's identity made them mean or hateful or less supportive as a spouse.

#4: Alone is Miserable

A lot of people that I know have a hard time being alone. They won't eat in a restaurant alone, or go to the movies alone. I have no problem doing either. Alone is one of my favorite ways to travel. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being alone. Would I be absolutely thrilled to find a boyfriend to have fun with? A man to spend the rest of my life with? You bet. But do I have to be in a relationship to be happy? Of course not. I know this video has been circulating for a long time, but it says it so much better than I ever could. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Enjoy:

#5: Marriage is Maturity

Why is a person suddenly more grown up just because they're married? While many of my friends in college were planning their weddings, I was planning my mother's funeral. I can almost guarantee that while our varied life experiences have left us with varied maturity levels, I certainly do not come out on the short side. Ask my rheumatologist. I have experienced many things that people twice my age are still waiting for. But I'll still be asked just to bring potato chips to the potluck and more often than not be patronized by those who are married and think that they can out-Martha me just because they happen to have a husband and/or children living with them while they play house. I'm having plenty of fun playing house by myself without any help from Ms. Stewart or her followers. My DIY projects might not garner as much gushing and ooh's and aah's since I'm the only one who sees them, but I can sew and crochet and DIY better than a lot of married folks, and I'm a lot more interesting than quite a few of them, to boot. I also didn't have to stop appreciating childish things like park swings and cartoons. You don't have to be serious to be mature, folks.

#6: A Woman Should Be ________

Go ahead and fill in the blank. I wouldn't exactly call myself a feminist, but I wouldn't say I'm not one, either. Other than "kind" and "respectful of all living things and all viewpoints", I really can't think of too many things I think that any one person should be. People who are their own people make other people uncomfortable.

I want to be more than just a pretty girl. I don't need to be rescued.

Some Roswell Pictures

Alien Wine Festival-great wines all weekend for $10!

So. Many. Foil. Hats.

Roswell UFO Festival 2011

OK, people on Facebook asked about the lectures that I attended at the festival this year, so here goes. Ordinarily I just go for the corny parts of the weekend (costume contest, parade), but this year I decided to get to the heart and soul of the festival. Here's a breakdown:

What it takes to be a UFO Field Investigator (Mark Easter, MUFON director of public relations): this is the first lecture I had the opportunity to attend when I got into Roswell, and it was fascinating! For those of you who don't know, MUFON stands for Mutual UFO Network. They are an organization committed to studying the UFO phenomenon scientifically. Mark Easter gave us a great history of sightings and speculated as to why this famous crash occurred in Roswell in 1947. Did you know that a great majority of sightings tend to center around war activities? (look up the Foo Fighters in World War II....no, not the band). New Mexico was the only place in the WORLD in 1947 in which nuclear bombs were being assembled and tested. Since then, many UFO sightings have occurred near major weapons manufacturing centers and nuclear power plants. Mr. Easter told us of a case that he is currently investigating in which a man sees UFO activity over his house regularly. He lives near a chemical weapons manufacturing facility. During testing and reduction of chemical weapons (by means of burning them off), activity increases. When nothing is going on at the plant, it stops.

Anyway, MUFON is a pretty darn credible organization. They don't make any wild or sensational claims and share all of their information. I highly recommend checking out their youtube channel and website. They also freely admit that 90-95% of sightings reported turn out to be explainable, but they are committed to finding answers about the remainder of the sightings. Turns out that becoming an investigator is a fairly involved process, and you have to be certified and train with an investigator who has some experience. Anybody can do it, though. Am I going to do it? Probably. I'm already looking into it, but apparently the test involves quite a bit of science and knowledge of aircraft, so it may take me awhile. In a few months though, if you report a sighting to MUFON and live in my area I might be the person conducting your interview!

Witness to Roswell (Tom Carey and Don Schmitt): after this lecture I'm 100% convinced that there was in fact a coverup, and that what was recovered at Roswell was at the very least not identifiable and perceived as a threat to national security. The two gentlemen presenting have spent something like 30 years interviewing people who were present for the initial recovery of materials, the events at the hospital in the following days, etc. The lecture was too long to go into detail here but there is a good summary on Wikipedia, believe it or not. I was planning to go on a guided walking tour of the old air base Monday morning, but had to pack up the tent early due to lightning.

Captured: the Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (Kathleen Marden, niece of the Hills): this was a very compelling presentation about the first documented case of UFO abduction. Normally I'd tend to dismiss people who say they were abducted as nuts, but the physical evidence present in this case was pretty darn convincing. Kathleen Marden, by the way, is not easily dismissible as a nutcase. She worked for years in social work, then got a degree in education and worked as a teacher and in educational services. She is well-educated and quite well spoken. Betty and Barney Hill were also not easily dismissible as nuts and were in fact very active in their local community, Church, and organizations such as the NAACP. The details heard in the 90 minute lecture are too long to post here, but it's definitely worth it to check out Kathleen Marden's website. Again, the physical evidence present was very compelling.

Fire in the Sky (Travis Walton): the Travis Walton case is another very well-documented abduction case, and in this case there were also six witnesses. If you haven't seen the movie Fire in the Sky, go check it out. The whole thing is available on youtube. Mr. Walton told us that Hollywood did take quite a few liberties with the story, but it's pretty darn close. Again, it was difficult to dismiss him. He's as close to normal as you can get, and unlike a lot of other people at these kinds of things, was obviously not out to sell his book or get attention. He was almost shy, to be honest, and seems genuinely to just want to be believed. Among the interesting physical evidence that came to light is the condition of the trees in the clearing in which he was taken. From 1975 (when he was taken) until a couple of months ago (forest fires), core samples from the trees in the clearing show that they are producing wood fiber at 36 times the rate they were previously. This did not occur in other trees in the forest. There was also a lot of radiation present at the site during the five days that he was missing.

UFO's, Nuclear Weapons and Cover-ups (Robert Salas): this guy was the most convincing at the whole festival. He graduated from the Air Force Academy, got a masters in aerospace engineering, and spent years as a nuclear missile commander. He was the man with his finger on the button that could have destroyed life as we know it during the Cold War. Specifically, he was in charge of ten nuclear missiles in Montana and spent the better part of each night in an underground bunker. One night, his guards came in freaking out over these big orbs of light hovering near the perimeter fence-and then all of the missiles simultaneously went down. That is the gist of the story, and it's happened multiple times at multiple missile facilities all over the world, as recently as 2010. Mr. Salas now has a master's in education and teaches high school math. Again, exceptionally normal guy, and exceptionally credible. More information can be found at his website.

I have to admit that when I started going to this festival it was just for the costume contest and to hang with the weirdos. I passed it off as an anthropological thing: I'll infiltrate this little cross section of society and see what they're all about, and then laugh about it later. As often happens with anthropologists, I've basically assimilated. Most of these people are very normal. Sure, there are plenty of genuine weirdos and authors selling their romantic science fiction books, but there's a continuum of nuts in every group. I can't really laugh at these people anymore. Sure, I've always had an interest in this stuff but I've never been thoroughly convinced. I am now!